Illinois in the Democratic Movement of the Century: An Address Delivered at the Centennial Meeting...

Illinois in the Democratic Movement of the Century: An Address Delivered at the CentennialMeeting of the Illinois State Historical Society, April 17, 1918Author(s): Allen JohnsonSource: Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984), Vol. 11, No. 1 (Apr., 1918),pp. 1-13Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Illinois State Historical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40187032 .

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ILLINOIS IN THE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT OF THE CENTURY.

An Address Delivered at the Centennial Meeting of the Illinois State Historical Society, April 17, 1918.

Allen Johnson. In the month of November, one hundred years ago, two

Congresses were in session - four thousand miles apart. One was an inconspicuous gathering of plain citizens, representative of the common people, charged with prosaic duties: the levying of taxes, the appropriating of public moneys, the framing of laws for a people still largely raw and rural, still amazingly ignorant of the vastness of their own country. This Congress sat in an unkempt town whose public buildings had been burned, only four years before, by an invading army. The city of Washington was barely eighteen years old.

The other Congress convened at the ancient town of Aix- la-Chapelle - the German Aachen - shrouded in memories which went back to the Middle Ages, when German Emperors were crowned in its famous cathedral and buried in full re- galia in its deep vaults. The ashes of Charlemagne, so tradition said, lay under foot. This brilliant gathering was at- tended by royalty. The crowned heads of Eussia, Austria, and Prussia with their entourage were present; the kings of Great Britain and France were represented by their ministers. These three monarchs had no mandate from their people, ac- knowledged no obligations to their people, sustained no inti- mate contact with their people. They were bound together by one of the most extraordinary alliances in all history - the Holy Alliance which had emanated from the strange mind of Czar Alexander I of Russia. The unctuous phrases of the pious document which the impressionable Czar had offered to his fellow monarchs of Austria and Prussia might mean much or little. Metternich, prime minister of Austria, de-



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clared the prof er^ed alliance a sonorous nothing ; the English premier referred to it as a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense. Its significance in history lies in its name which was soon applied to the combination of the five great powers that met at Aix-la-Chapelle.

The presiding genius of this European Congress - the dominating figure of Europe, indeed, for full thirty years - was Prince Metternich. He was the living embodiment of that repressive spirit which seized the minds of reactionary rulers after the fall of Napoleon. He hated the French Revo- lution with perfect hatred. To his mind the revolutionary spirit was a disease which must be cured ; a gangrene which must be burned out with the hot iron. He abhorred parliaments and popular representative institutions. He represented perfectly the reactionary spirit of his liege sovereign who declared the. whole world mad because it wanted new constitutions and who crushed remorselessly every trace of liberalism in his Austrian domains. Playing upon this common fear of revolution and this common hatred of popular sovereignty, Metternich bound the five great powers to a policy of repose, of political immobility, over against the propaganda of liberals throughout Europe. In case of further revolution in France - that hotbed of popular unrest - they were to unite to quell the storm. By further Congresses steps would be taken to cure the malady of revolution wherever it might break out. The year 1818 marks the beginning of that repressive policy which sounded the death knell of popular government in the Old World for a generation.

While this famous Congress of monarchs-by-divine-right was setting the face of Europe against the mad doctrinairies who talked of constitutional government, our plain, sombre- dad congressmen on the banks of the Potomac were quietly and as a matter of course giving their approval to a constitution drafted by inhabitants of a distant territory where the native redman still roamed and where primeval forests and prairies still awed men by their great brooding silences. At the very time these self-appointed defenders of absolutism and the peace of Europe were leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, our national House of Representatives was voting to receive Illi- nois into the American Union on an equal footing with the thirteen original states.



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In this contrast I find the fundamental reason for Amer- ica's participation in the Great World War. And now once again, one hundred years after Aix-la-Chapelle, irresponsible government has thrown down the gage of battle, and Ameri- can Democracy has accepted the challenge.

I have mentioned Great Britain among the five powers who followed the lead of Prince Metternich. This is not the time or place to explain the circumstances that made contem- porary England also reactionary. Enough that even the Mother of Parliaments had lost its true representative character. Many an Englishman felt that he was losing his political birthright under the heavy repressive hand of the Tory squirearchy. Much as he might mistrust the firebrands of liberalism in Europe, he had no heart for a policy which de- nied to a nation the right to choose its own political institutions. And it was the silent, indirect pressure of such Eng- lishmen that eventually forced the British government to protest against Metternich >s doctrine of intervention. Eventu- ally, too, liberalism broke through the tough crust of British conservatism and achieved the reform of Parliament.

It was in these days of the unref ormed Parliament, when representative government had become a farce, when the common man who (fid not possess a freehold worth forty shillings a year found himself a mere taxpayer without a vote, when a land-owning squirearchy monopolized political office and tabooed reforms, that English yeoman farmers cast wistful glances overseas. Held fast between the insolence of wealth on the one hand and the servility of pauperism on the other, they could see no prospect of relief in Merrie England. There was only hollow mockery in the name.

Happily we are not without direct personal records of these Englishmen who came to America on their own initiative or that of their fellow farmers and mechanics. As they made their way over the Alleghanies to the prairie country, they found America in incessant motion. "Old America ", wrote Morris Birkheck, one of these plain English farmers, "seems to be breaking up and moving westward ". He was a correct observer. America was on wheels or on horseback. Conditions somewhat like those in Old England were driving New Englanders and Virginians and Pennsylvanians in a



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veritable human tide into the valley of the Ohio. The commonwealth of Illinois was born in the midst of this swirling emigration.

It has been the fashion of historians to ascribe this rapid westward movement to the lure of free lands. A fundamental instinct, no doubt, this passion for virgin soil that one may call his own. The pioneer who in his own clearing between the stumps of trees felled by his own hand, planted Indian corn in the deep rich - illimitable rich, black loam, was ob- sessed by one of the deepest of human emotions. This soil and the produce thereof was his - his. His sense of individual property became acute. Like Anteus of Greek mythology his contact with the soil increased his might. His manhood leaped to its full height, as he brought acre after acre under cultivation.

Yet other motives for the crossing of the Alleghanies played no mean part. Man does not live .by bread alone. Birk- beck confessed to a strong desire to better his material for- tunes - to "obtain in the decline of life, an exemption from wearisome solicitude about pecuniary affairs;" but he de- sired even more for himself and his children membership in a democratic community free from the insolence of wealth. That is a recurring note in the history of American expan- sion, a note that vibrates as passionately as lust for land. Deep seated in the breast of every man whom the conventions of an older society have barred from recognition is the sense of outraged manhood - rebellion against the artificial restrictions of birth, family and inherited wealth. It is this eternal protest of human nature against man-made distinctions of class that has driven thousands of souls into the wilderness. That self-assertive spirit of the Westerner which at times breaks rudely in upon the urbane life of older communities is his protest against conditions from which - thank God- he has escaped. Your Westerner of the twenties and thirties of the last century, your Westerner who hurrahed for Andrew Jackson and bore him triumphantly into the White House, was asserting his native manhood. He was the living embodiment of Carlyle's Everlasting No.

It is interesting to observe the subtle influence of Amer- ican conditions on this English farmer whom we have chosen



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to follow to the territory of Illinois. The spirit of optimism radiates from his journal - an optimism that made him an in- accurate observer at times ; but the worth of his observations is less important just here than this objective impression of his inner mind. It is as though a weight were rolling off his heart. He breathes great drafts of prairie air, stands more erect, allows his eye to range over the prairies, and yields un- consciously to that sense of distance and space which has wid- ened imperceptibly the mental horizon of three generations of Illinoisans.

I find my thought projecting itself forward fifteen years and my eye catches sight of a true son of Illinois who came from the cramped valleys of Vermont to the broad prairies of the Northwest, and who testified to his own mental growth by the not very gracious remark that Vermont was a good state to be born in provided you migrated early.

What charmed this transplanted English farmer was "the genuine warmth of friendly feeling" in the communities through which he passed - "a disposition to promote the hap- piness of each other." These people have rude passions, he admits. ' ' This is the real world and no political Arcadia. ' ' But "they have fellow-feeling in hope and fear, in difficulty and success." After a few months on the prairies of Eastern Illi- nois he feels himself an American. * ' I love this government, ' ' he exclaims; "and thus a novel sensation is excited ; it is like the development of a new faculty. I am become a patriot in my old age."

And what was this government which he held in such af- fection? He does not name it but he describes it in unmistak- able terms. "Here, every citizen, whether by birthright or adoption, is part of the government, identified with it, not virtually, but in fact". This was American Democracy.

Not all the States of the American Union at this time were democratically organized. A few, a very few, were born democracies; some achieved democratic institutions; and some had democratic government thrust upon them. It is one of those pleasing illusions which patriotic societies like to in- dulge and which are perpetuated by loose thinking, that democracy was brought full-fledged to America by the Puritan fathers.



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Nothing could be further from the truth! Let us face the historic facts frankly and fearlessly. Men of the type of John Winthrop did not believe in social or political equality. They would have stood aghast at the suggestion that every male adult should Tiave a voice in the government which they set up on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. They shrank from those leveling ideas which radicals were preaching in Old England. There was little in colonial New England that sug- gested social equality. Men and women dressed according to their rank and station in life. Class conventions were everywhere observed. Public inns reserved parlors for the colonial gentry; trades people went to the taproom or the kitchen for entertainment. All souls might be equal in the sight of God; but one's seat in church, nevertheless, corresponded to one's social rank. Learning might be open to all classes of men; but the catalogue of Harvard College in the 17th century list- ed the names of students not alphabetically, but according to social standing.

So feeling and thinking these Puritan patricians of the Massachusetts Bay Colony indulged in no foolish dreams of democracy. Almost their first precaution was to raise bul- warks against the unstable conduct of the ungodly. At first only church members were allowed to become freemen in the colony. Only godly men of good conversation should be in- trusted with the choice of magistrates. And when this policy of rigid exclusion broke down under assaults from the home government, property qualifications were established as in the rest of the straggling English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard.

When the American colonies declared their independence there was not one which did not restrict the right to vote to male adults who were property holders or holders of estates. The usual qualification was the possession of a freehold worth or renting at fifty pounds annually or the ownership of fifty acres. Under these restrictions probably not more than one man in every five or six had the right to vote. If democratic government means the rule of the majority, then these thirteen colonies were hardly more democratic than Prussia in this year of grace 1918.

In framing constitutions for the states in the course of the Revolution, the fathers followed habit and precedent. They



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betrayed little or no concern for the unpropertied or landless man. They followed the universal rule that those only were entitled to vote for magistrates who showed evidence of "at- tachment to the community." And evidence of such attach- ment consisted in the possession of property - preferably landed property. Said that typical American of his age, Ben- jamin Franklin, "As to those who have no landed property . . . the allowing them to vote for legislators is an impropriety. ' ' Alexander Hamilton, who was typical only of his class however, voiced a still stronger feeling when he contended that those who held no property could not properly be regarded as having wills of their own.

I do not know how I can better illustrate the tenacity of these political ideas of the Fathers than by alluding to a mem- orable constitutional convention held in the State of New York in the year 1821. Constitutional conventions are mile- stones on the road to American democracy. In the delibera- tions of these bodies are reflected the notions that flit through the minds of ordinary citizens. Progress and reaction meet on the floors of these conventions.

It is the 22nd of September, 1821. The subject under dis- cussion is the elective franchise. It is proposed that the old property qualifications shall still hold in elections to the State Senate. James Kent, Chancellor of the State of New York, is speaking - a learned jurist and an admirable character. There is deep emotion in his voice. The proposal to annihi- late all these property qualifications at one stroke, and to bow before the idol of universal suffrage, strikes him with dis- may. "That extreme democratic principle wherever tried has terminated disastrously. Dare we flatter ourselves that we are a peculiar people, exempt from the passions which have disturbed and corrupted the rest of mankind? The notion that every man who works a day on the road or serves an idle hour in the militia is entitled of right to an equal participation in the government is most unreasonable and has no foundation in justice. Society is an association for the protec- tion of property as well as life, and the individual who contributes only one cent to the common stock ought not to have the same power and influence in directing the property con- cerns of the partnership as he who contributes his thousands. "



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Of this notable speech, another member of the convention remarked that it would serve admirably as an elegant epitaph for the old constitution when it should be no more. He was right. Chancellor Kent was facing backwards - addressing a vanishing age. And yet he was no mere querulous reactionary but fairly representative of a large class of men whose reverence for tradition was stronger than their faith in democracy. At this very time in another constitutional convention, young Daniel Webster was defending the property qualification in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The constitution which your fathers drafted one hundred years ago is a significant mile- stone in our march toward democracy. On this frontier of the Old Northwest was born that spirit of self-confidence and self-help which has made the people of the great Middle West an incalculable power in the national life. It was as inevitable as breathing that these pioneer farmers should express this spirit in political institutions. With firm bold characters they wrote unhesitatingly into the constitution of 1818 these words :

"In all elections, all white male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State six months next preceding the election shall enjoy the right of an elector. "

I shall not pause here to question the wisdom of permit- ting even alien inhabitants to vote, nor to point out in detail T^hy the convention of 1848 withdrew the privilege. It may ivell have been certain experiences in the old Third Congres- sional District which tempered the democratic ardor of the •constitution-makers. When an aspirant for congressional Tionors could vote en bloc hundreds of stalwart canal-diggers, fresh from Erin's Isle, it was well, perhaps, to call a halt. These laborers had in them, no doubt, the making of good citizens ; but a residence of a few weeks even in Illinois could not educate an untutored mind to the point where it could make the necessary distinction between an election and a Donnybrook Fair.

It is quite unnecessary, too, to remind this audience that suffrage has long since ceased to be restricted to whites. It is certainly the part of discretion, if not of valor, at this time, to refrain also from discussing the latest extension of the suffrage. I hazard only the prediction that the same democratic



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forces will ultimately give women the ballot when they demand it. There is an insistent force in this movement of the century which sweeps away all considerations of prudence and expediency. But I have no desire to handle live wires : Let me confine my remarks to far-reaching historical importance of the adoption of male adult suffrage by Illinois and her sister states of the Northwest. The reaction of West upon East has too often been overlooked by American historians. Not all good things follow the' sun in his course. Political reactions are subtle and can often be felt more easily than they can be demonstrated. Yet there can be no doubt that it was the theory and practice of manhood suffrage in the new states which led the older Eastern States one by one to abandon their restrictions. It was the new State of Maine - itself the frontier of Massachusetts - that led the way. It is no mere accident, I think, that Maine is also the first of the New England States to try out the initiative and refer- endum. This democratization of the East was a slow pro- cess. The nineteenth century was nearly spent before the conservatives abandoned their last stronghold.

Meantime revolution had broken out for the third time in central and western Europe. The system of Metternich had been shattered ; the repose of Europe rudely shaken. For a time it seemed as though even Germany would yield to the assaults of liberals and nationals. Unification and constitutional government seemed within reach in 1848. I may not dwell upon these days of storm and stress, of shattered illusions and futile dreams. Suffice it to say that reactionary forces triumphed, and forced many a stalwart soul to turn his back upon the Fatherland. It was these exiled liberals, these Forty-eighters who came to the prairies of Illi- nois and the Middle West and made common cause with their brethren in the struggle for human liberty. In these times of storm and stress we do well to remember that these Ger- man exiles became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh - laying down their lives for their adopted land when the hour of destiny struck.

Slavery had already driven a sharp wedge into Ameri- can democracy. Something besides the freedom of the ne- groes was at stake. Men were asking searching questions.



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Could a society that harbored slaves be truly democratic? Could a nation which permitted a minority to dictate foreign and domestic policies be termed democratic? Could a people consent to refrain from talking about a moral issue at the dictation of slave-interests and still remain true to democratic traditions? Must a democratic people refrain from putting barriers in the way of the extension of slavery because a minority held slavery a necessary and blessed in- stitution?

Two stalwart sons of Illinois returned answers to these questions - answers that were heard and pondered throughout the length and breadth of the continent. Men then found these answers contradictory and debated them with partisanship and passion but we may rise above the immed- iate issue and discern the essential agreement between these two great adversaries. When Stephen A. Douglas asserted that no matter how the Supreme Court should decide, the people of a territory could still permit or forbid slavery by local legislation, he was enunciating bad law, it is true, but a principle thoroughly in accord with American practice nevertheless. His great opponent never challenged the general democratic right of a people to self-determination ; nor did he deny that, irrespective of law, the people of a territory would in fact obey American traditions and decide questions of local concern through a public opinion that has more than once in frontier history ignored distant lawmakers.

When Abraham Lincoln stated the nature of the irre- pressible conflict within the Eepublic by declaring that the Union could not exist half-slave and half -free, he registered his conviction as a great democrat, that no minority can be suffered indefinitely to force its will on the majority when a question of moral rights is involved.

And finally, when Lincoln declared that the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott could not stand as law, he was speaking as a prophet, not as a lawyer. In effect, he was asserting that no minority may seek shelter behind the dead hand of legal formalism when the moral sense of the living majority is outraged thereby. Even courts and legal precedents must eventually yield to an enlightened public will.



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These passionate days of the late fifties followed by four tragic years of civil war stripped the halo from democracy. It was seen that it was no panacea for all human woes ; and that existing American democracy was not the perfect goal of political development. During reconstruction our eyes were opened to the perversions of democracy. We saw crimes perpetrated in the name of democracy. We saw stealthy hands thrust into our public treasuries; we saw mysterious interests interposed between the people and their government; we saw - in a word - government slipping away from the people either through the ignorance or incompetence or connivance of their chosen representatives. Democracy has come to seem to many men less an achievement than a hope, a dream, a promise to be fulfilled.

Dante compared the restless Italian cities of his day, with their incessant party struggles and changing govern- ments, to sick men tossing with fever on their bed of pain. There is a similar instability in our American life which seems to many learned doctors a symptom of disease in the body politic. The state of Oregon experiments with direct legislation; Arizona with the recall; Illinois has had some experience with proportional representation; every state has tried its hand at reform of nominating machinery and regu- lation of party organization ; municipalities have set up gov- ernments by commission only to abandon them for city managers; Kansas has even considered commission government for the State.

To my mind this experimentation is a sign of health not disease. It is of the very essence of progress that human institutions should change. Distrust that state which rests content with its achievements. Dry rot has already set in. These restless movements in American States and cities are attempts to adjust democratic political institutions to new economic conditions. The machinery of government was perfectly adapted to society in Illinois when it entered upon Statehood one hundred years ago. Society was almost Ar- cadian in its simplicity. Substantial social equality prevailed under rural conditions. Government was inevitably democratic. But this great Commonwealth has long since lost its Arcadian simplicity. It is a highly organized industrial



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community. Society is classified and stratified. Govern- mental institutions designed for another and different society must be readjusted to the needs of modern life. Yet the essential basis of democracy need not be changed and will not be changed.

In these days of carnage and unutterable human woe, when democracy suffers by comparison with autocracy in efficient ways of waging war, I detect here and there, as I am sure you do, a note of distrust, - even covert sneers at the words of our chosen leader that the world must be made safe for democracy. Ladies and Gentlemen: there are other tests of democracy than mere efficiency. I am prepared to concede - though the statement has been challenged - that German municipalities are better administered than Ameri- can cities; that their streets are cleaner; that their police regulations are more efficient; that their conservation of natural resources is more far-sighted. What I cannot concede is that an autocratic government, however efficient, can in the long run serve the best interests of the people. Auto- cratic government does not develop self-help in its subjects. It enslaves. It robs manhood of its power of self-assertion. It denies opportunity to struggling talent. It makes subjects ; it does not make citizens of a commonwealth. The im- potency of the German minority which hates Prussian Jun- kerdom is the price which the German nation is now paying for efficient but autocratic government.

There are two tests which every government must sus- tain, if it is not to perish from the earth. It must not only serve the material and moral welfare of its citizenry; it must also enlist their active support. It is not enough that democratic government should promote public contentment. It must also cultivate those moral virtues of self-restraint and self-sacrifice without which enduring progress cannot be made. Citizenship in a democracy cannot remain a nega- tive and passive privilege to be enjoyed ; it must be an active force for righteousness. And the ultimate test of the qual- ity of citizenship in a democracy is the leaders which it pro- duces. A brilliant Frenchman has applied this test. Sur- veying democracies the world over with a somewhat jaun- diced eye, he has found everywhere only the cult of incom-



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petence. I do not so read the history of American democracy. I do not find " right forever on the scaffold and wrong forever on the throne. ' ' Incompetence has often been enthroned, it is true; mediocrity has often been rewarded; but in great crisis the choice of the people has been unerring. Should we not judge democracy by its most exalted moments as well as by its most shameful? Our famous warriors have been idolized for a time ; our merchant princes and captains of in- dustry have been admired for their cleverness; our orators and politicians have had their little day. We put them in our Halls of Fame; but we withhold our reverence to bestow it upon our Washington and Lincoln. There is something chal- lenging, thought-arresting, awe-inspiring, in the emergence of Abraham Lincoln as a national hero. Here was a man who described his early life in the words of the poet Gray - "the short and simple annals of the poor"; who grew up in your midst - a man among men ; who entered the White House misunderstood, and derided as a "simple Susan"; yet who became the leader of the nation in its greatest crisis. You do not honor him because of his intellectual qualities alone. You reverence his memory because he embodied the moral aspira- tions of American democracy.

Abraham Lincoln was the greatest contribution of Illi- nois to the democratic movement of the century.



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